2008/04/30

In a twist on the recent string of sex tapes of Hollywood’s young stars, Vivid Entertainment plans to release what it says is a film from the vaults of classic rock: a sex film supposedly of Jimi Hendrix.

The film shows a naked man who resembles Hendrix, the guitar legend who died in 1970, wearing a bandanna in his Afro, having sex with two brunettes in a dimly lighted bedroom. His full face appears on screen for only a few seconds, with his eyes closed. In other portions there are flashes of his profile. But his hands, bedecked with rings, roam large on the screen at times. The film has no audio.

Vivid, a large maker of pornographic movies that is releasing the film this week, has created a 45-minute DVD, called “Jimi Hendrix the Sex Tape,” that combines 11 minutes of sex footage with a retrospective of Hendrix’s career in the 1960s (but with none of his music included).

But the identity of the man in the film, which has circulated among Hendrix aficionados for years, is fiercely disputed by experts and former associates. And the DVD arrives on the heels of a string of hoaxes involving star look-alikes and one other dead superstar

The DVD includes commentary from two women who met Hendrix and say they believe the tape is real: Pamela Des Barres, the author of “I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie” (1987), and Cynthia Albritton, better known as Cynthia Plaster Caster. Ms. Albritton is known for doing plaster casts of the genitals of rock stars, including Hendrix in 1968. (Mr. Hirsch said both women were paid for their contributions to the video but declined to be more specific.)

“I’m 100 percent sure it’s him,” Ms. Albritton, 61, said in an interview from her home in Chicago. “The facial bone structure is the same. The eyebrows and the mustache are true to the style he was wearing in 1970.”

But Kathy Etchingham, 60, one of Hendrix’s steady girlfriends during the ’60s, said via e-mail after viewing still photos from the film at the request of a reporter: “It is not him. His face is too broad and nose and nostrils too wide for Jimi. Also the hair is too low on the forehead.”

“He would never have allowed anyone to see that,” she said in a telephone interview. “In private he was very shy and would cover up.”

The film has also been dismissed by Hendrix collectors and historians. One expert said that the rings the man in the film is wearing do not resemble any he had seen in years of studying pictures and film of Hendrix. Charles R. Cross, author of the Hendrix biography “Room Full of Mirrors” (Hyperion, 2005), encountered the film during his book research. “It doesn’t add up to Jimi,” he said.

2008/04/29

The Sean Bell’s family has been getting threatening and harassing calls and emails from a variety of places. Sure you have the normal trash, but some of these calls originated from the offices of the Sergeants Benevolent Association. New York Police Department's, Internal Affairs Bureau is now investigating these evil phone calls made straight to Bell's wife/fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell.

I don’t advocate the killing of police officers, but I heard the people in Brooklyn, New York are sick and tired of the consistent and persistent legacy of police brutality in NYC. According to the New York Daily News (NYDN) (currently the NYDN routes to: "Page not found"; however per AHH: Sean Bell's fiance gets prank called by laughing pigs after verdict thread), “dozens of cops” were removed off the streets, because of some sort of plot to shoot the ones that patrol the streets. Apparently, a snitch told the coppers in East New York about the plan.

Per

latter AHH thread:

…A cruel prank call to the family of Sean Bell's fiancée that originated from the Manhattan offices of a prominent police union, The Post has learned.

"Ha, ha, ha," someone said in a 1:15 p.m. Friday phone call to the home of Nicole Bell's father Les Paultre, according to a police source.

South Korean scientists say they have cloned cats whose genes have been altered so that they glow in the dark - taking advantage of a technological twist that could someday be used to make more dramatic genetic changes in all sorts of creatures.

"The ability to manipulate the fluorescent protein and use this to clone cats opens new horizons for artificially creating animals with human illnesses linked to genetic causes," the Ministry of Science and Technology said in Wednesday's report.

3 For those who refuse to commit to one strategy: The hermaphroditic earthworm Dendrobaena rubida has both male and female genitalia. If it cannot find a partner, the worm doubles up so that its female bits and male bits can go to town.

4 Although famously monogamous, female Adélie penguins slip away from their mates occasionally to couple with unattached males. They exact a fee (pdf) for such a dalliance—stones to bolster their nests—not unlike certain people.

5 Some talented penguin teasers can get a gift even without putting out. Again, not unlike certain people.

6Barbary macaques have a distinctive way to get their mates to make a sperm donation: yelling. If the female does not shout, the male almost never climaxes.

7 How do we know this? German primatologist Dana Pfefferle watched a group of macaques, counting the females’ yells and the males’ pelvic thrusts. She says this work is “quite weird, but it’s science.”

8 Here in the US of A, that kind of stuff ends up on YouTube.

9 Because Barry White sounds terrible underwater: Fish can produce a variety of noises with their bones, teeth, and gas bladders. Grant Gilmore of Estuarine Coastal and Ocean Science Inc. says that male fish probably use some of these sounds to woo females.

10 The spiny anteater, an egg-laying mammal native to Australia and New Guinea, has a penis with four heads, but only two fit into the female at once.

11 The tiny male paper nautilus, an octopus, impregnates the much larger female by shooting his penis (a modified tentacle) into her—and leaving it there.

12 Homosexual behavior is found in at least 1,500 species of mammal, fish, reptile, bird, and even invertebrate.

13 My two dads: When a male goose courts another male goose, a female sometimes slips in and mates with both males. Later, the male partners share paternal duties.

14 Some seagulls practice lesbian mating, although the eggs that result from their liaisons are sterile.

15 Biologists at the University of California at San Francisco have found that male fruit flies exposed to high levels of alcohol become hypersexual and try to court practically anything with wings, including other male fruit flies. Eventually the revelry turns into a dysfunctional orgy, with “a chain of males chasing each other,” says one insect expert (subscription).

16 As the flies get increasingly tanked, their chance for mating success keeps dropping. This is one more reason why the fruit fly is a great model for studying humans.

17 Only a few vertebrates besides humans copulate face to face. Among those that sometimes do this: hamsters, beavers, and some primates, such as bonobos and orangutans.

18 French kissing is rarer still. The only other species known to do it as a prelude to mating is the white-fronted parrot. After the birds open their beaks and touch tongues, the male spews his lunch onto the female’s chest.

19 It is here that the mating habits of the white-fronted parrot and Homo sapiens diverge.

20 Size really does matter: People tend to choose mates of similar race, education level—and chubbiness. A recent British study indicates that obese people usually select partners with comparable levels of body fat.

2008/04/28

Kevin Powell is a Brooklyn, New York-based writer, community activist, and author of eight books.

... But I knew this verdict was coming. I have lived in New York City for nearly two decades and, before that, worked as a news reporter for several publications throughout the city’s five boroughs, and I cannot begin to tell you how many cases of police brutality and police misconduct I covered or witnessed, more often than not a person of color on the receiving end: Eleanor Bumpurs ... Michael Stewart … Amadou Diallo ... Sean Bell.

This is not to suggest that all police officers are trigger-happy and inhumane, because I do not believe that. They have a difficult and important job, and many of them do that job well, and maintain outstanding relationships with our communities. I know officers like that. But what I am saying is that New York, America, this society as a whole, still views the lives of Black people, of Latino people, of people of color, of women, of poor or working-class people, as less than valuable. It does not matter that two of the three officers charged in the Sean Bell case were officers of color and one White. What matters is the mindset of racism that permeates the New York Police Department, and far too many police departments across America. Shooting in self-defense is one thing, but it is never okay to shoot first and ask questions later, not even if a police officer “feels” threatened, not even if the source of that “feeling” is a Black or Latino person.

That is a twisted logic deeply rooted in the America social fabric, dating back to the founding fathers and their crazy calculations about slaves being three-fifths of a human being.

“I Am Sean Bell,” many of us chanted in the days and weeks immediately following his death. Yet very few of us showed up to the hearings after, and even fewer had the courage to question the vision, or lack thereof, of our own Black leadership who accomplished, ultimately, little to nothing at all. And very few of us realized that the powers-that-be in New York City have come to anticipate our reactions to matters like the Sean Bell tragedy: we get upset and become very emotional; we scream “No Justice! No Peace!”; we march, rally, and protest; we call the police and mayor all kinds of names and demand their resignations; we vow that this killing will be the last; and we will wait until the next tragedy hits, then this whole horrible cycle begins anew.

And a long as we have leadership, White leadership and Black leadership, mainstream leadership and grassroots leadership, that can do nothing more than exacerbate folks’ very natural emotions in a tragedy like this, we will never progress as a human race. … So many of us, especially us Black and Latino males, will continue to have a very nervous relationship with the police, even the police of color, for fear that any of one of us could be the next Sean Bell.

Hip-hop singles are top sellers at iTunes, but the genre’s albums sell poorly online — only seven percent of hip-hop full-lengths sold are downloaded, versus ten percent of albums overall. Still, indie-rap fans are a different breed. “They’re buying complete albums — they have favorites, they can name the classics,” says Jay Andreozzi, general manager of Amalgam Digital. Below, a few new sites catering to indie-rap consumers.

This indie label/retailer, which sells unprotected MP3s, makes deals with artists to offer albums with exclusive bonus tracks and videos. They recently signed ex-Def Jam MC Joe Budden (above) and released his digital-only album, Mood Muzik 3.5, with a cappella versions of all the songs. The site is also packed with intel for hip-hop heads, including interviews with artists such as Wale and Ill Bill.

When Las Vegas record store HipHopSite closed last year, the operation moved online, building an impressive digital-download outlet. The exclusive stock includes singles and digi-LPs and -EPs from the likes of Talib Kweli and J Dilla, and digital-only mixtapes, including the “Preemptive Hype” series, featuring and KRS-One, Common and Method Man.

This iconic label’s site is home to a wealth of downloads from the biggest names in indie rap: and Aesop Rock, El-P, RJD2 and more. Though it already hosts exclusive tracks and EPs by these artists, the site will expand to include releases from other indie labels later this year.

If you've ever seen photos of LeBron James away from the basketball court, it's obvious he takes great pride in his appearance.

In fact, he's widely considered one of the best-dressed guys in the NBA -- perhaps even in all of sports. LeBron's mentor is Jay-Z, the rapper-turned-mogul who dropped throwbacks for Armani suits years ago.

LeBron's image clearly means a lot to him, maybe even as much as pursuing a championship. And that's why I can't understand why he would allow Vogue to feature him with supermodel Gisele Bundchen in such a distasteful manner.

In case you haven't seen the cover, LeBron has Gisele in one hand and a basketball in the other. LeBron is dressed in basketball gear, with his muscles flexing, tattoos showing and bared teeth. Gisele, on the other hand, is wearing a gorgeous slim-fitting dress, and smiling.

She looks like she's on her way to something fashionable and exciting. He looks like he's on his way to a pickup game for serial killers.

Now, maybe the point was to show the contrast between brawn and beauty, masculinity versus femininity, strength versus grace. But Vogue's quest to highlight the differences between superstar athletes and supermodels only successfully reinforces the animalistic stereotypes frequently associated with black athletes.

A black athlete being reduced to a savage is, sadly, nothing new. But this cover gave you the double-bonus of having LeBron and Gisele strike poses that others in the blogosphere have noted draw a striking resemblance to the racially charged image of King Kong enveloping his very fair-skinned lady love interest.

LeBron is just the third male ever to appear on Vogue's cover, but it's hard to believe Vogue would have made Brett Favre, Steve Nash or even David Beckham strike his best beast pose. And even if Vogue had, it wouldn't carry the same racial undertones as having a fear-inducing black man paired with a dainty damsel.

The examples of this are endless. The 2002 Sports Illustrated cover that featured Charles Barkley chained like a slave. Ricky Williams wearing a wedding dress on an ESPN The Magazine cover in 1999. And while it didn't appear in a magazine, the Terrell Owens-Nicolette Sheridan intimate-encounter tease for "Monday Night Football" gave viewers a sexualized image of a black man.

In fact, the shirtless black male athlete cover is pretty much a staple, reinforcing the idea that black athletes were blessed with physical characteristics, not mental ones.

"Society has become more civilized, more humane over 150 years or so, and that's all fine and good," said Dr. John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor and author of the controversial book "Darwin's Athletes: How Sports Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race." "But what happens to these fundamentally racist ideas over a period of time? Do they simply disappear?"

Having studied the images of black athletes for years, Hoberman contends that the images of black athletes presented today are no better than the ones offered centuries ago. And if it matters to you, Hoberman is white.

"One of the 19th-century themes was the savage versus the civilized," Hoberman said. "The practice of stripping black males above the waist and displaying him is as American as apple pie." But we don't even have to dip back to the 19th century to see how images of black athletes have affected how we think and thus how we view sports. In 1994, Jack Nicklaus said there weren't more African-Americans in golf because "blacks have different muscles that react in different ways."

And that backward thinking isn't limited to whites, either. Former ESPN NFL analyst Michael Irvin channeled his inner Jimmy the Greek when attempting to explain Tony Romo's abilities. Irvin surmised that Romo was good because his "great, great, great, great grandma pulled one of them studs up outta the barn [and said], 'Come here for a second.'"

It's like Barack Obama said in his much-talked about speech on race Tuesday. We know so little about one another. Even scarier, we know even less about the fallout of racist history.

"It's a great, great issue that Vogue has made trivial," Hoberman said. "It's exploitative. It's going for the primitive, racial emotion as opposed to something tasteful and edifying."

Vogue deserves criticism, but more blame should go to LeBron and other black athletes, who need to exercise stricter control of their images. If LeBron is brave enough to wear a Yankees cap at an Indians playoff game, picking up a history book and educating himself shouldn't cause a strain.

This isn't to say Vogue's cover deserves to be in the same category as Golfweek magazine, which featured a noose on its front during the Kelly Tilghman-Tiger Woods flap. But as always, it's important to question who was in the room when the cover decisions were made.

As it is, LeBron was the first African-American male to grace Vogue's cover. Too bad it will be memorable for the wrong reasons.

In reverse, this FREE DOWNLOAD starts with the album closer: A Little Better.

Noting the lengthy .mp3 of reversed vocals and music I’m reminded of Special Ed’s: I’m The Magnificent, Youngest In Charge (Profile, 1998) album which producer HowieTee features the vocals and music of the original mix reversed (although Special Ed calls on his DJ Action Love to perform the reversal). “So Action Love, put it in reverse…”

Apr. 15, 2008: Masseuses in Indonesia's East Java province are now required to wear padlocks on their pants to stop prostitution.

The padlocks come courtesy of a recently-implemented policy of local government. Authorities want to take the initiative a step further and make the padlocks law. But some local politicians say the policy is an insult to women and will only promote promiscuity.

The Virginian-Pilot newspaper is reporting that famed producer Teddy Riley, born Edward Theodore Riley, October 8, 1967 in Harlem, New York, has fallen on hard times and is selling his Virginia Beach recording studio to help get himself out of debt.

According to the newspaper, the architect of New Jack Swing owes $1 million to several creditors and is hoping money from the sale of his Future Records Recording Studio will satisfy the bill. But that's not likely to happen.

The one-story building was considered state-of-the-art when Riley purchased it for $3 million in 1991, but the equipment is now thought to be out of date. The house was reportedly assessed at only $460,000.

During a court hearing on Friday, Feb. 1, 2008, lawyers representing two different creditors to whom Riley reportedly owes money agreed to seek a buyer for the studio. Both attorneys understand that the studio has dated technology, but Richard J. Conrod, Sr., a lawyer for one of the creditors, is hoping to sell the property as a working business instead of just real estate.

Riley has reportedly been in debt since at least 2002, when he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. He bounced back a year later, only to have the IRS file a $1 million lien against him for unpaid income taxes in 2004. Two years later he was forced to sell his home in the posh Church Point neighborhood of Virginia Beach for $1.5 million to pay off federal and city taxes, as well as the home's remaining mortgage.

In 2007, the IRS filed another tax lien against him for $196,747 and just this past month the state of Virginia filed a $93,684 income tax lien against the musician.

Bill Cosby: a staunch critic of some rap music - is set to release a Hip-Hop album called State of Emergency, which will be a sanitized, issue-oriented CD.

Sources told AllHipHop that the actor, comedian and philanthropist will address issues like proper parenting, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, Black-on-Black crime and the dropout rate in America's high schools.

In 2004, Cosby said in a speech, "Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other [the N-word] as they're walking up and down the street. They think they're hip. They can't read. They can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere."

Cosby's album will not contain any profane language, nor will it offer any denigrating comments towards women.

State of Emergency would be the 35th album for the legendary comedian, actor, who released his first album Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow in 1963.

Whether or not Cosby will work with rappers on his lyrical flow or his musical selection was not known at press time.

Could Hip-Hop see an epic rap battle between two titans of culture, knowledge and entertainment?

Michael Eric Dyson strongly suggested during a recent outing that he would be recording an album that would respond to Bill Cosby’s upcoming rap album, State of Emergency.

“There’s nothing worse than a comedian that’s trying to be serious on a certain level. That could be hazardous to your career. And to your health,” Dyson, 49, told AllHipHop.

Whether or not they spar lyrically remains to be seen, but they have wrangled via the written word.

In Bill Cosby’s 2007 book Come On, People, he chastises gangsta rappers saying that that artists and corporations promote the N-Word, degrade women and attempt to normalize deviant behavior.

In 2006, Dyson responded to Cosby’s notions in the award-winning book Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, where he looked at what he considered an “assault on the Black poor.”

“Bill Cosby’s made some great albums. Some of the stuff he’s done in jazz pioneering has been incredible,” admitted Dyson, who also confessed to being interested in what his peer had in store. “I actually am interested in hearing what he’s got to say, if he is rapping himself or does he have guest rappers or if he’s going to do his thing…because he’s a funny dude,” Dyson said.

In the Obama-Clinton Battle, Race & Gender Pose Two Great Divides for Black Women

Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet, and the Negro, too, has an ocean of wrongs that cannot be fathomed. There are two great oceans; in the one is the black man, and in the other is the woman. . . . I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of the terrible pit."

-- Lucy Stone, 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist, after women were excluded from the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote.

The "isms" have once again been pitted against each other. Sexism or racism -- which ism is deepest? All things being equal, should a woman or a black man be lifted to the presidency? Which "first" is the imperative first?

The admonitions of white feminists urging black women to vote gender over race have cracked open a scab, a festering sore, that had crusted over the history of this country's competing isms. A scab that covered the lingering tension between some white feminists and some black women, with their dual historic burden of race and gender. It is black women, after all, who have faced both sexism and racism in their lives.

In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, which ism goes first? Some women fear the question, say it is divisive, explosive, should never be asked. But it has been asked -- in the recent writings of feminists including Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan. The question is ripe, reeling under the surface, discussed with muffled outrage by black women grown weary of white feminists seeming to tell them what to do.

The follwing features excerpts from XXL's, June 2008, Vol. 12, No. 5, Rising Down article by Branden J. Peters:

Michael “Killer Mike” Rener, the self-proclaimed “Outcast of Outkast” is upset as a man not as a hater. The following excerpts should expound on his perturbation:

“I used to look at rap like it was real,” he says. “And I believed the people who were talking. But them days is gone. Now, I just look at a bunch of lying-ass-ni**as” And sometime they say good shit, but most of the time they say bullshit.

“I’m not into swagger. In fact, swagger’s a bit effeminate for me,” he says. “Before I was a rapper, before I was a drug dealer, before I was a drug dealer, before I was a student at Morehouse College, before I was any of those things, I was a man. And my whole life goal has been to be a man, like the men I admire. And that’s what’s wrong with rap right now―you don’t have any men. You don’t have anybody willing to be responsible. You don’t have anybody willing to give their audience real game.”

Scientists first saw one of these frogs 30 years ago, but due to their rarity, just one other specimen had been collected since then and neither had been dissected.

"No one thought to open them up — there was no real reason to believe that they could be lungless," said researcher David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. "Because these specimens were so rare, they had never been dissected. If you have just one specimen in your museum, you don't want to rip it open!"

Other organ weirdness

It appears that the rest of the internal organs in these frogs have shifted position to take up the space once filled by the lungs. "So we had the stomach, spleen and the liver up in the area where lungs are normally found," Bickford said. "Interestingly, we also discovered some abnormal cartilage around the area where the lungs should have been that we are still investigating."

The loss of lungs helped the frogs severely flatten their bodies. This in turn increased the surface area of their skin, which helps them absorb oxygen.

The researchers conjecture the loss of lungs might be an adaptation to the cold, fast rivers the frogs live in. Such waters naturally have high oxygen content. Also, the frogs would rather sink than float and get carried away in the water, so getting rid of lungs, which behave as flotation devices, would prove helpful.

Amphibians are also cold-blooded, "so their inherent energy requirements are very small — roughly 10 percent that of a similar sized mammal," Bickford said. "If you don't need as much oxygen anyhow, it might be easier to change, to lose lungs as the primary respiration organ."

The distillers of Sweden's Absolut vodka have withdrawn an advertisement run in Mexico that angered many U.S. citizens by idealizing an early 19th century map showing chunks of the United States as Mexican.

The billboard ad has the slogan "In an Absolut World" slapped over a pre-1848 map showing California, Arizona and other U.S. states as Mexican territory. Those states were carved out of what had been Mexican lands until that year.

Defending the campaign last week, Absolut maker Vin & Spirit said the ad was created "with a Mexican sensibility" and was not meant for the U.S. market. "In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues," a spokeswoman wrote on Absolut's Web site.

Absolut's blog cite has received more than a thousand comments since the ad campaign was launched a few weeks ago, with many calling for boycotts of the Swedish company.

"I have poured the remainder of my Absolut bottles down the sink," one blogger wrote.

A war between Mexico and the United States from 1846 to 1848 started with Mexico's refusal to recognize the U.S. annexation of Texas and ended with the occupation of Mexico City by U.S. troops.

At the end, Mexico ceded nearly half of its territory to the United States, forming the states of California, Nevada, Utah and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming.

Mexicans remain sensitive about the loss and the location of the border. At the same time, the United States is fortifying barriers to keep out undocumented Mexican migrants.

Some Mexicans use the term "Reconquista" (reconquest) to refer to the growing presence in California of Mexican migrants and their descendants.

Dis-klā-mər

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The group name Alphabet Soup is explained as follows:
The communicative rudiments of language starts with the alphabet. The alphabet is a set of letters and/or other characters written or otherwise (oral-tradition, etc.) arranged in a customary order to convey knowledge or inform. The "Soup" was our music. Together the compliment of both words (alphabet) and music rendered the EP: Sunny Day In Harlem.

Physically, Holden is gangly and tall. He is also described as having several gray hairs on the right side of his head. These two qualities contribute to Caulfield's appearing to be older than his age, yet his mannerisms and behavior contradict that impression. One of Caulfield's most striking and quintessential qualities is his powerful revulsion for "phony" human qualities. Qualities such as narcissism, hypocrisy, and superficiality embody Holden's concept of phoniness; and, unfortunately, Holden is adept at realizing these qualities in other people. This serves to bolster Holden's cynicism and consequently contributes to his mistrust of other people. Interestingly, despite Holden's strong disdain for phony qualities, he exhibits some of the qualities that he abhors, thereby making him a somewhat tragic character.

Caulfield is the second of four children, with two brothers, D.B. and Allie, and one sister, Phoebe. (There is also a second sister, Viola, who is briefly mentioned in the short story "I'm Crazy," but is never referred to again.) Allie is deceased at the time of The Catcher in the Rye. Their parents are left unnamed in Salinger's works.

Born into a life of wealth and privilege, Caulfield looks down upon the elite world he occupies. He questions the values of his class and society and sometimes appears to oppose conventions merely for the sake of opposition. He is widely considered to be the template for the "angry young man" archetype.